Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Armed with a computer model in 1935, one could probably have written the exact same story on California drought as appears today in the Washington Post some 80 years ago, prompted by the very similar outlier temperatures of 1934 and 2014.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Archives: 06/2007

George W. Bush has been a big spender, but he also is increasing the burden of government in other ways. As explained in a piece for Investor’s Business Daily, government red tape has climbed to all-time highs:

…there is much more to government’s reach in the economy than direct spending. The costs to the public of complying with federal health, safety, environmental and economic regulations appear nowhere in the federal budget. Economist Mark Crain’s research for the U.S. Small Business Administration finds that in 2006 regulatory compliance cost Americans $1.14 trillion. Astoundingly, that approaches half of last year’s total federal spending of $2.6 trillion, and exceeds 9% of U.S. GDP… Agencies publish regulations in the Federal Register, the daily depository of all federal rules and regulations. In 2006, the Register swelled to 74,937 pages, the second-highest level in history (the highest was 2004). Within those pages, agencies issued 3,718 final rules. …the 60-plus federal departments, agencies, and commissions are at work on 4,052 more rules. Of these, agencies report 139 are “economically significant,” which means they will cost at least $100 million — often far, far beyond — while 787 are expected to affect small businesses. …Almost 4,000 new rules every year is a lot of “regulation without representation.”

Even though neighboring flat tax nations such as Slovakia are growing faster and creating more jobs, the labor movement in Prague is protesting reforms that would improve the Czech Republic’s competitiveness. The International Herald Tribunereports on this self-destructive impulse:

Around 15,000 labor union members protested in downtown Prague Saturday against the government’s proposed tax reforms and cuts in welfare spending. …If approved, a 15-percent flat tax on personal income would be introduced in 2008. Currently, the personal tax rate ranges from 12 percent to 32 percent, depending on income. The corporate tax rate would be cut from 24 percent to 19 percent by 2010. The draft also includes cuts in social benefits, unemployment benefits, maternity leave payments and health care spending. The labor unions claimed that only the wealthy would benefit from the proposed changes.

The state-controlled energy giant Gazprom on Friday bought a vast natural gas field in Siberia from a unit of British-based petroleum conglomerate BP, continuing the Kremlin’s policy of shifting control of the country’s major energy projects from foreign to state hands.

The last part of the sentence begins to hint at what really happened, a truth that is concealed by words like “purchases” and “bought.” In fact, the Russian government and its giant energy firm Gazprom forced BP to sell, as it has forced other companies to turn valuable properties over to Gazprom and the oil company Rosneft, often through the use of trumped-up tax or regulatory issues.

Journalists should be straightforward about such things. Gazprom did not “purchase” a gas field from BP. This was no “willing buyer, willing seller” transaction. It would more accurately be described as a seizure, a confiscation, or at best a forced sale.

The Wall Street Journal used similar language. The New York Times, to its credit, was more honest and clear: Its headline read, “Moscow Presses BP to Sell a Big Gas Field to Gazprom,” and the story began, “Under pressure from the Russian government, BP agreed on Friday to sell one of the world’s largest natural gas fields to Gazprom, the natural gas monopoly, in the latest apparently forced sale that benefited a Russian state company.”

Footnote: Today is the second anniversary of the Kelo decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could take private property for the benefit of other private owners such as developers. In a stinging dissent, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote:

The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory. …Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.

The United States is not Russia. But O’Connor’s warning that “the beneficiaries [of forced takings] are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms” is certainly borne out — not just by a new Institute for Justice report on eminent domain in action — but by the actions in Putin’s Russia.

One of the most interesting trends in tech policy over the last decade has been the emergence of free software as a major force in the computer industry. For example, some of our readers probably use the Mozilla Firefox web browser, which was developed by a team of volunteers collaborating over the Internet. And in fact, you’re using free software right now! Cato’s own web servers use the Linux operating system and the Apache web server to serve up Cato’s website. Both Linux and Apache are free software, developed by volunteers and made available for free to the general public.

Free software has caught some flack among libertarians who fault it for its failure to rely on the traditional mechanisms of the market. In the latest edition of Cato’s TechKnowledge newsletter, I argue that this criticism is misguided.

Free software is precisely the kind of decentralized, voluntary cooperation that libertarians should be holding up as an alternative to the coercive power of the state. Free software is produced by volunteers donating their time, without a government program in sight. If that’s not a libertarian success story, I don’t know what is.

So why do we see so many libertarians criticizing such peaceful, but noncommercial, forms of social organization? Many are taking the bait offered by the subset of free software proponents who have adopted the rhetoric of the left to promote their goals. We’re used to arguing with these people, who advocate using the state to impose communal forms of organization. Libertarians criticize forcing employees to join unions, prohibiting organ donors from becoming organ sellers, and requiring children to attend government schools. In each case, we hold up markets, business, and money as the tools of voluntary alternatives to coercive government programs.

In these arguments, progressives often claim they can use state power to create and nurture the rich social structures that typify civil society. But they’re wrong. State intervention almost always results in bureaucratized and politicized institutions that pit us against one another in bitter struggles. For example, a lot of progressives laud the potential of public schools to create more unified communities. But in practice, the opposite is true: our public schools have become one of the most divisive institutions in American society. They’ve sparked pitched battles over what to teach our children about sex, evolution, religion, and many other topics. The reality is that you can’t create civil society by government fiat.

So libertarians are right to criticize policies aimed at accomplishing communal goals via coercive means. But some libertarians have gotten so used to defending the market against those who want to impose collectivism that they start criticizing purely voluntary efforts to organize people on more communal lines. They are forgetting that libertarianism is not necessarily about increasing the role of for–profit enterprise in every aspect of our lives. Commercial activity is one alternative to statism, and an extremely important one. But it’s just one possible mode of cooperation, and it’s not necessarily the best choice in every situation.

While many European governments deserve criticism for their high tax rates and destructive welfare states, sometimes America is the nation that is lagging when it comes to free market reform.

Corporate tax rates are one example, since every European nation has a lower rate than America. Social Security reform is another area, since many European nations have funded systems based on personal accounts.

And, as the Wall Street Journalexplains, the Europeans are also beating America when it comes to postal reform. Several nations already have eliminated government monopoly systems and others are heading in that direction, though backwards nations such as France are trying to block continent-wide liberalization:

Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and the U.K. have opened their postal markets completely; Germany and the Netherlands have said they plan to do so soon. Brussels began liberalization efforts back in 1997 and a 2002 law envisioned an open postal market by January 1, 2009.

Yet five years after that tentative deadline was set, and with 18 months still to go, the likes of France’s La Poste complain that they need more time to prepare. It’s unclear what exactly they will be able to accomplish in those extra two years that they couldn’t manage in the first dozen.

One safe bet is they’ll continue piling up easy profits to use in new businesses they’ve started. To take one example, La Poste, Deutsche Post and others have used the proceeds from their letters monopolies — a €90 billion business in Europe — to open banks.

In the meantime, consumers increasingly have to break the bank just to send a letter. In the 10 members of the EU-15 that haven’t completed or planned postal liberalization, the average stamp price rose by 7 European cents, or about 18%, between December 2001 and February 2007, according to data from the Free and Fair Post Initiative. In the five countries that have liberalized, the average price fell by 2 cents, or about 4%. Studies show that full market opening, including cross-border competition, could drive prices down by as much as 20% to 25%.

As annual spending bills wind their way through Congress this year, there are ongoing battles over earmarked funding for members’ pet projects.

To get a sense of what the battle is about, check out this newly released list of earmarks in the House Interior appropriations bill.

People scour such lists looking for embarrassing bridges to nowhere in Alaska and indoor rainforests in Iowa.

But the real issue is federalism, not earmarks. Many of these funding projects are not federal responsibilities at all. Look at all the local sewer facilities on the list under the EPA. Why can’t Seattle, Buffalo, and other cities fund their own toilet pipes?

Of course, they can. But the idea of federalism has disappeared from public discussion in an orgy of state and local lobbying of compliant Washington politicians. For history and analysis of this issue, see here.

(Oh, wait a minute, take that back — my guy Jim Moran (D-VA) scored $700K to clean up Four Mile Run beside where I live in Northern Virginia. Nice job Jim! You’ve got my vote!)